


Of Sharks and Men

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, M/M, Mersharks, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 00:38:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8822761
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: He swims in the deep.His tail beats slow, propelling him through the water with sluggish, lazy speed. His hands trail beside him, his fingers long and pointed, his eyes wide and vacant, his skin sleek and gelatinous, the tiny bones that comprised his spine casually realigning with every movement. He doesn’t need to be fast.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For oneiriad's Coldwave Creature AU Extravaganza, Square: Merperson  
> Also for hamelin-born's prompt for mersharks

He swims in the deep.

His tail beats slow, propelling him through the water with sluggish, lazy speed. His hands trail beside him, his fingers long and pointed, his eyes wide and vacant, his skin sleek and gelatinous, the tiny bones that comprised his spine casually realigning with every movement. 

He doesn’t need to be fast.

It is his prey that needs to be fast, flipping their tails and straining to escape as he leisurely follows them on his hunting trails. They flutter their fins and they scramble for safety and they try to hide, but he can see them.

He can see the life bleeding out of them with every frantic movement.

He can see their hearts beating, slow, but not as slow as he. 

He smiles.

This is his element and his realm. Here, there is no need for speed, which burns away precious life, casting it out into the waters. 

Here, he is the apex predator.

The snow falls steadily, as it always does, and he swallows it idly as he goes, crunching it between his teeth. He reaches out and plucks the dogfish he’s been idly hunting from where it floats, exhausted, the water brightened by its life, and he rips its head off with his many-teeth. Then he flips his tail and heads snowsward. 

The snow falls into his face as he rises towards it. His kin, the eqalussuaq, are great travelers; they are bound by their biology to the snowsrealm and cannot go as far pullsward as his kind can. His kind rarely go beyond their sphere, but he has always been adventurous; he has swum far and long, and he speaks with his kin there.

It is his youthful kinsman who waits there for him; they know each other well.

“Leonard,” the eqalussuaq greets him, blinking slowly. His thick black hide is bleeding life with every moment, his heart beating too fast for these climes; he will need to return to the snowsrealm soon, or he will be crushed, his heart collapsing into his lungs, and he will become part of the snow. Such is the fate of all snowsrealm creatures, in the end: to become part of the snow and to fall pullsward towards the gaping mouths of his kind. 

“Jax,” Leonard says in return. His kind does not believe in names; there are not so many of them that they need the reminder. He is what he is, he is who he is; all who meet him know him. His deeds float along in his wake, in the life-force that even he emits and the marks that are carved on his skin; what need do they have for names? But Jax’s kind does, and Leonard is willing to indulge him, as Jax comes down to visit with him and tell him of the snowsrealm world.

Besides, who is to say that he may one day meet a creature who does not know how to read the life-echoes? 

Leonard has ambitions to meet such creatures.

“What news?” Leonard asks.

“Not much,” Jax says. “Grey says I’m crazy to come keep meeting with you.”

Leonard smiles with enough teeth that even Jax, who as an eqalussuaq has a perfectly respectable 50 pairs of teeth, instinctively backswims a little. “Tell him,” Leonard says, slow and lazy and knowing exactly how dangerous he is, “that you’ve developed a taste for swallowers that you can’t sate otherwise.”

“Saccopharyngiformes,” Jax says. “Yeah, I’ve told him. He still thinks I’m crazy. But he won’t object.”

“Good,” Len says, idly treading water, his tail keeping time easily while Jax struggles a little with his fins to remain mostly stationary in the current-stream. “There was a battle? Among the – what do you call them – humaniforms?”

“How do you know?” Jax asks, surprised. “And just humans; they call themselves human. But yes – two submarines. Some disagreement between them; one was flooded and sunk, and it came to rest…well, quite some distance above here, to be sure.”

“I could taste the rust,” Leonard says, turning his blind eyes snowsward. He knows if he goes too far in that direction, there will be too many life-echoes for him to see properly. Jax says that, if you go high enough, all the waters are flooded by the life-echoes of the glowing core-life that makes up the center of the snowsrealm. Jax says it’s called the ‘Sun’. “It was some distance far-polesward from here.”

“Far-polesward – you mean south?”

Leonard rolls his eyes. “Near-polesward is towards the pole,” he explains, not for the first time. “Far-polesward is towards the _other_ pole. Once you pass the center-seas, it switches. It makes sense. Unlike your ‘south’, which seems to be entirely relative.”

“It’s based on the same thing,” Jax grumbles. “North pole, south pole; that’s all.”

“And what do you do when they swap?” Leonard asks idly. Jax is young, even for an eqalussuaq; and the pole-swaps happen only once every hundred thousand years, at most. He will not have experienced such a turn, though perhaps it is in his genetic memory. 

Jax’s species is short-lived compared to Leonard’s. And he says that humans live even less, maybe a third or a fourth of that of a eqalussuaq, less than a twelve hundred tide-cycles – but they do so very much with the time they have.

Such quick little creatures. 

“…yeah, shut up,” Jax says. “Can we swim and talk?”

“Certainly,” Leonard says, and flips his tail, heading frosward. Frosward is counter-rotational – Jax would call it ‘west’, if Leonard is recalling correctly. Which means that tosward is 'east'. “Tell me about the battle. Or if there is anything new to tell, what else there is amongst the humans.”

“Humans again,” Jax says, amused. “They’re your favorites by far, ain’t they?”

“And why not?” Leonard says. “You tell me we are convergents.”

“Yeah, it’s freaky,” Jax says, deliberately tilting their direction some more snowsward while pretending to be swimming in a straight line, like Leonard won’t notice. Leonard doesn’t comment, though; no need to embarrass the boy with his inability to handle the pull. “They look just like your kind. Faster, of course, and smaller, and no tail, but otherwise just like. Round head, long fins with flexible joints at the end, feeding glands on their chest – they’re even viviparous!”

Leonard idly touches his first-scar, deep on his belly, from where his father first ripped him from the life-cord that connected them when he was still in the sac. All viviparous species are said to have something similar. 

“How progresses their technology?” he asks wistfully. Their bathyscaphes had brought them so very far pullsward that they were even within Leonard’s range, but they did it so rarely, he had not yet had an opportunity to actually meet one yet. 

“They’re shifting more towards remote vehicles, I think,” Jax says apologetically. 

“Of course they are,” Leonard grumbles. He stretches his fingers ahead of him, spreading them wide: ten fingers, long and skeletal and flexible, tapering into his poison-tipped claws. Another species with this particular evolution, and they’re surface-crawlers that are too curious for their own good – what’s the likelihood of that? 

Of course, they don’t have his fine tail or his fins, but then, he has to have something of the eqalussuaq, or else how would they know that they were kin?

“I’ll let you go,” he says to Jax. “Meet again in five rotations? Or is your school moving on?”

“No, we’re sticking around for a bit longer. Plenty of fish and seals, and Grey’s math says there’s something interesting going to happen here soon.”

Leonard widens his eyes in polite interest. Grey’s math-magic was intriguing – who really understood the strange ways of whales? – but not nearly so much as humans. Though it seemed that this avenue of exploration was not yet open: the humans were not coming to him, and Leonard could not yet go to them, not until he figured out a way to tolerate the excess life-echoes. 

He’ll figure it out.

He has other avenues of exploration open to him.

“Five rotations,” he instructs Jax. “At the bend of the current-stream.”

“See you there,” Jax says. “Maybe a little higher?”

“Higher?” Leonard asks. “Is that like south?”

“No – yes – well. You call it snowsward. Why do you call it that?”

“Snowsward is in the direction of the source of the snow,” Leonard says. “Pullsward is towards the pull.”

Jax shudders all over. “Yeah. Further away from that. The pressure, Leonard; it’s so hard to breathe…”

“A half-klick snowsward, then, and let’s make it ten rotations,” Leonard says agreeably, mentally adjusting the time and place in his brain. “That’ll be easier for you.”

“Thanks, Leonard,” Jax says gratefully, flipping fins and heading back snowsward. “See you then!”

“Bring better news next time!” Leonard calls after him, shaking his head and flipping tail pullsward instead.

Ten rotations gives him enough time to explore his other obsession. 

After all, there’s no reason to always be aiming snowsward. 

He swims steadily in the same direction as the snow, heading towards the pull. He can see the faint life-traces in the water clearer here, marking out where creatures darted around. There are fewer and fewer of them pullsward.

Eventually, of course, if you go pullsward, you end up at the flat, and you can’t go any further, but there are trenches and deep spots, places in the world that the pull is stronger still. 

Jax tells Leonard that the snowsrealm has many creatures. He speaks of schools that number larger than dozens. He speaks of hundreds. Thousands. 

_Billions_.

Leonard knows mathematics, even if he isn’t a whale; he simply cannot imagine how so many lifeforms exist all in one place. Don’t they run out of food? And is Jax certain that the life-echoes come from this supposed ‘Sun’ rather than simply a reflection of the life-echoes around him?

But no – he’s not thinking of humans now.

He’s thinking of the pull. Life-traces are scarcer the further you go pullsward, every child knows that. That’s the way of the world: the pull is so enormous that it crushes all within its grasp, creature and rock both, and the further to the pull, the fewer creatures can survive. The fewer creatures, the less food, and that in turn makes it hospitable to even fewer creatures. But there are places where sometimes that doesn’t seem to be right.

There are, after all, the Vents.

There is a life-core deep underneath the flat, hiding behind rock, never visible – only audible, to ears turned to hear the strumming magnetic field. A big, thick life-core, emitting vast quantities of life-force, enough to fill the water by the Vents with life-echoes. 

It’s unbearably fascinating.

It’s unbearable, period. Too many life-echoes in a given place make the water vibrate at a strange frequency. Leonard doesn’t have a name for it – the opposite of his own element, the life-draining stillness of the deep water – but he’s drawn to it regardless. The same frequency exists snowsward, the closer you get to the life-core of the Sun; the Vents are the window to the life-core in the other direction.

To his blind eyes, they shine in the emptiness of the water that lacks life other than the tubes that parasitically grow along the sides of the vents. 

The tubes are quite delicious; he’s tried them. But he’s not looking for a new cuisine; he’s looking for _sapience_. 

He’s already explored the Vents near the near-pole, but he’s heard stories of Vents that are even further pullsward, down further towards the center-seas between the poles. The frequency overall is higher there – the poles are far more comfortable – but the possibility of something dwelling deep, deep, deep, where even Leonard’s kind rarely go…

It’s too good to pass up. 

It might be a myth, of course – Leonard’s sole surviving sibling-pup thinks he’s a madman, chasing after legends and stories and dream-fragments, but what does she know or care? She’s content with being mistress of her domain – but Leonard fully intends to explore it nevertheless.

Besides, perhaps something he finds pullsward could help him with his snowsward problem.

And so he goes pullsward and far-polesward, one slow beat of his tail at a time, using his ears to find the strong current to sweep him along, fast-fast-faster than he regularly prefers, but if he is to meet Jax again in ten rotations, well, he’s got to get to where he’s going. 

Leonard swallows snow as he goes, his gills filtering as much as possible into his blood, but the dogfish he ate earlier gives him enough life to carry on for some time. His heart beats so slow; he doesn’t need so very much life-force to power him.

The sea carries him forward in endless stream, as he snoozes, and then he’s there.

The currents are much stronger when you head pullsward. Everything wants to go pullsward and everything will, in the end.

Leonard is outside his hunt-trail, but his kind rarely linger in the center-seas, preferring the poles. He’s never heard of a variant of his kind that prefers the center-seas, but he lives in hope. After all, the sea is vast and mysterious, and no one has yet mapped it all.

The frequency waves are higher here, and the pull is stronger.

Leonard tells himself not to be too optimistic. He hasn’t found what he’s looking for yet – he doesn’t even know what it is that he’s looking for, only that he’s driven to find it – and there’s no reason to think he’ll find it now, but he finds himself becoming excited regardless of his admonishments to himself.

Finding the local Vents is easy enough. The magnetic echoes show him the parts of the flat which bend pullsward, and he can follow the life-echoes after that point.

The Vents are so very bright.

Leonard circles around one thoughtfully. This one is emitting some sort of plume, much larger than the ones by his own hunt-trail; the frequency is very high here. It’s…strange. Not unpleasant, but definitely not his element. It makes his heart beat the slightest bit faster.

The plume is definitely doing something strange with the frequency. Or is it vibration? He’s not sure. It’s some strange sensation, a more intense version of what happens when he goes too far snowsward. He reaches out his hand to touch.

He makes it halfway before something wraps around his wrist.

“You crazy?” a gruff voice barks.

Leonard blinks, his translucent eyelids flicking down and then back up, and then he turns his head to regard what has wrapped around his wrist. He can’t see it, of course, but emanating life-force that exists within each living creature tells him everything he needs to know. 

Five long, thin fingers. No claws – blunt, square fingers. Thick wrist, strong arm. Broad shoulders – broader than Leonard’s – and a round head. Flat chest, tapering to a narrow waist, with a first-scar like Leonard’s. His tail is thick with muscle. He has several more fins than Leonard does, including a set of sharp, point-like blades extending from his elbows. His body is covered in markings both like and unlike to Leonard’s. They tell a story, to be sure, though Leonard cannot read them, but they’re not carved into his flesh with jagged claw, a pit of less-life than the rest of the skin. The skin is raised up, instead, more-life; some different sort of injury. 

Leonard lets his gaze slowly trail all the way up to the other’s face, which is strangely suffused with life-force. More than usual, for some reason. 

“Hello,” he says.

“Hello to you too,” the other says, shaking his head. “You always greet people like that?”

“Like what?” Leonard inquires.

“Like they’re the top of the menu – and I’m not talking about eating.”

Leonard has – no idea what the other is talking about, actually. 

“Long, slow, lingering stare, examining every inch of my body; sound familiar?” the other clarifies.

“I _was_ examining every inch of your body,” Leonard says. 

“See anything you like?” the other sneers.

“Yeah,” Leonard says. 

“What?”

“Yes,” Leonard clarifies. “I liked what I saw.”

The other seems confused and ducks his head a little. “Oh. I, uh…oh.”

“Why did you stop me from examining the plume?” Leonard asks. The other has not yet released his wrist; this pleases Leonard, though why exactly he cannot say.

“Because it just burst,” the other says. “So it’s really freaking hot.”

“Hot?” Leonard asks.

“Yeah, _hot_.”

“What’s ‘hot’?”

“What – oh, shit,” the guy says, and pulls Leonard closer to him, beating his strong tail to take them further away from the plume. “Now that we’re out of the dust, let me have a look at you…oh.”

Leonard widens his eyes in curiosity.

“I…I’ve heard of you,” the other says. “Pole-dwellers, right?”

“Yes,” Leonard says.

“Shit, you’re even prettier than I’d heard – uh, not to be weird about it, or anything,” the other adds hastily. 

Leonard blinks, long and slow.

“…especially when you do that. Uh. Okay. You’re blind, right?”

“In technical terms, yes,” Leonard says. “My eyes process life-force.”

“…life-force?”

“High frequency emissions from living creatures? And sometimes, from the Vents?”

“You see – heat?”

“If you define heat as life-force, or life-echoes, then yes. Life-echoes being life-force that is deliberately omitted in diffuse form.”

“Bioluminescence,” the other says, nodding. “Makes sense. Okay. My eyesight’s great, as it so happens; things like that sometimes go weird in the hadal zone.”

“You’re from the pullsward trenches?”

“Yes, as far down as it can go. Our young are nurtured there. I assume you’re from the abyssal zone?”

Leonard inclines his head. The terms are familiar to him from Jax’s usage, and the one time he went snowsward enough to meet with the whale Jax called Grey – abyssal for his kind’s region, which Jax also called the deep, and hadal for that which extended pullsward even beyond them, what Jax called the pit – and they seem to have extended to the center-seas. 

“Okay. Uh. Cool.”

“‘Cool’?”

The other twitches. “No idea of heat, no idea of cold, right,” he mutters, whipping his tail once in distress.

Leonard carefully runs his thumb alongside the other’s wrist in a calming gesture.

The other shudders, but calms.

“You should come with me,” Leonard decides. He’s not accustomed to making decisions quickly – he prefers slow, deliberate thought – but this other feels right. Feels like, maybe, this was what he was looking for.

Besides, Leonard will need to question him thoroughly regarding life in the center-seas. He’s never met one of his kind who could ‘see’, much less one from the hadal zone. 

“Where to?”

Leonard blinks again.

“Anywhere you like,” the other concludes. “I…you know what, why not. Yes. Okay. I’m coming.”

“Good,” Leonard says. 

They’re about halfway to the current that will get them home when the other says, “Do you have a designation?”

Leonard tilts his head slightly to the side, rolling his hips a little to indicate the markings that cover him, a long sinuous gesture with his whole body.

“I wish you either wouldn’t do that, or do it a lot more,” the other says nonsensically. “Let me see – first-born, first-litter, great-hunter, treasure-robber, clever-mind, much-talker, _kraken-slayer_?”

“That was fun,” Leonard says nostalgically.

“That’s _insane_. How did you manage that?”

Len smiles with many teeth. “I thought it out first,” he says.

“Wait, it wasn’t a random encounter? You went and _hunted_ a kraken?”

“Yes.”

“…nice.”

Leonard’s smile broadens. It’s nice to be appreciated. 

The other continues to read his designation, though he limits himself to that which is carved into Leonard’s body, not his life-force. 

When he has mostly concluded, Leonard says, “You’ve really got to let me examine your markings at some point as well.”

“Uh, sure.”

“Since I’m blind,” Leonard says, “I can only read those which are raised. I may need to examine you with my fingers for any remaining marks.”

The other makes a slightly strangled sound. “Yeah,” he says. “Sure. You…do that. You can _definitely_ do that.”

“Good,” Leonard says, pleased.

“One question,” the other says. “Between your shoulder blades…”

“Father-killer,” Leonard says, nodding. He’s very familiar with that particular glyph. 

“That regular, for your kind?”

“It’s extremely irregular,” Leonard says mildly. “Our kind is raised as a unit until adolescence, at which point we scatter and do not reunite until the breeding seasons, each to our own hunt-trails.”

“Okay. If – if it’s not too rude…”

“My father abused both myself and my sibling-pups,” Leonard says, because he’s not shy about it. If he was, he wouldn’t have had his sister carve it into his back to declare it to the world. “He used us, and whosoever failed him, he ate; I obeyed until I was large enough in order to protect my youngest sibling-pup, who was my especial favorite, and when he at last turned upon her, I ripped his heart out of his chest.”

The other looks impressed. Leonard is pleased; that is the correct reaction. Fear or revulsion wouldn’t have been nearly as good. “Well done,” the other says. “I, uh –”

“You caused your family’s death inadvertently,” Leonard says, nodding. “When you were barely more than a pup yourself.”

The other kicks his tail and flips himself in front of Leonard. “How’d you know that?” he demands. “I don’t have it marked on me.”

“No,” Leonard says. “But their echoes follow you – the ghosts you keep are as much a part of your Self as anything else, you know.”

The other gapes at him for a moment. Leonard slides forward, curling around the other once, before continuing along his way. He feels deeply contented with the others’ presence; he hopes the other will continue to follow him. 

“They said the blind-eyes saw more,” the other finally says. “Didn’t believe it till now.” He pauses and considers for a long moment, then adds, “The surfacers I know – a albino dolphin who’s crazier than a frilled shark and an orca with the dumbest markings you’ll ever meet – call me Mick.” 

“A friendly eqalussuaq gave me the name of Leonard,” Leonard offers. “Where did you meet a dolphin and an orca, in the hadal zone?”

“What, Sara and Ray? It wasn't in the hadal zone. My kind is born in the hadal zone, yes, but we migrate,” Mick says. “Up and down the volcanic streams, straight alongside the fire-streams. We’re heat-lovers at heart, though we don’t mind the cold…and you understood none of that, right.”

“Not a bit,” Leonard says. 

“It doesn’t bother you, not to understand?”

Leonard considers this. “No,” he says eventually. “It would bother me, yes, but I have you, and I will not let you go until you answer all of my questions. And I have many questions.”

Mick chuckles. “You planning on keeping me around?”

“I am.”

“And if I decide to leave?”

“Too late now,” Leonard says, smiling. 

Mick’s chuckles grow into a laugh. “Really?” he asks, amused. “And if I decided to turn back, right now?”

He’s still laughing, and Leonard is still smiling, when Leonard reaches out and drives his poison-tipped claws into Mick’s primary dorsal vein.

Mick wakes up two rotations later, just as Leonard is re-entering his familiar hunt-trails, Mick slung over his back like a particularly fruitful hunt.

“You’re a real piece of work,” Mick tells him, once he’s shaken awake. “How long was I out?” He looks around. “Uh, and where are we?”

“My hunt-trails,” Leonard says. “Those closest to the central-sea, sure, but still. Home sweet home.”

Mick’s nose wrinkles as he thinks. “…but you’re a pole-dweller,” he says.

“I am.”

“And you swim really slow, even accounting for current-riding.”

“Yes.”

“I was unconscious for _two rotations_?”

“Your mathematical skill is admirable,” Leonard tells him.

“I’ve been kidnapped,” Mick says, blinking. “I’ve been kidnapped by a beautiful pole-dweller who wants to run his hands all over me – am I awake?”

“…yes?” Leonard says. 

“Good,” Mick says. “Do you have a place where you usually sleep?”

“I have a nest,” Leonard says, his mouth moving without his consent. He’s a little horrified by it, honestly; yes, he has a nest, but he rarely _sleeps_ there. It’s not for regular sleeping; it’s for –

Other purposes.

“Great,” Mick says, apparently oblivious to the context. It must be a cultural difference of some variety. “Now show me the best hunts; I want to prepare you some nice fish.”

“Prepare?” Leonard says blankly. “Don’t you just eat them?”

“Just wait,” Mick promises. He doesn’t seem inclined to run away, so Leonard shows him the finest hunts, the richest valleys, the most fruitful currents.

In return, Mick does… _something_ …to the three oneirodidae they catch.

“I can’t stop eating,” Leonard says, chomping on another bite. His stomach’s going to be swollen, he just knows it, but it’s _so good_. “What did you do to them?”

“Family secret,” Mick says, grinning broadly. “My grand-sire says it’s foolproof; it’s how he captured the attention of my – well,” he amends, “let’s just say it’s been in the family a long time.”

“Your kind remains with your family beyond adolescence?” 

“It's the migration,” Mick says. “We meet up – well, those of us left – every year on the great passages across the sea. Lots of time to catch up with each other.”

Leonard contemplates this. It would be nice to see his sister again, other than by random passing.

In fact, it occurs to him that their random encounters are far more common than his chance meetings with others; he has always made a point of drifting on the near-poleward stream when he knew there was a chance she might be in the area, and he suspects the reason that she always happens to encounter him as he hunts the seal-corpses that fall by the great cliffs is that she knows of his fondness for them. 

A regular, scheduled encounter might not be so bad a custom to adopt.

“Tell me more of your migrations,” Leonard says. He wants to know everything about this other, this _Mick_ , and he may as well start there as anywhere.

Mick smiles at him. His smiles are not as dangerous as Leonard’s, and they do not seem to be meant that way. It is another custom of the central-seas, no doubt.

Leonard does not think he would mind learning more about them.

Indeed, it turns out over the few next tide-cycles – Jax is bemused by Mick’s presence, but as with many things with Leonard, he doesn’t really question it – that bringing Mick home was an eminently reasonable decision.

Entirely logical.

And yet, Leonard finds himself…dissatisfied.

Not with Mick’s presence! Mick fits right where Leonard never knew there was a gap, a space in on his left side where there is now a welcome presence, a valuable ally, a partner.

And yet, he feels that something is missing. 

That old adventurous urge has not faded, though it has sublimated into dreams which _include_ Mick, there by his side in every dream, even when Len lets the currents take him where he will, swimming idly in his sleep. He has not tired of Mick; he does not think, now, that he will _ever_ tire of Mick.

Mick, who makes him delicious foods in mixtures he has never before contemplated. Who preens Leonard’s skin with such care that the not-marks of Leonard’s designation glyphs stand out like never before. Who brings him beautiful marker-stones for his nest.

Who _sleeps in his nest_.

It’s driving Leonard a little mad.

Perhaps that’s the issue? His instincts complaining that he has permitted another to occupy his nest, when breeding season is coming up? He’s never participated in a breeding season before – he’s been uninterested in bearing pups, his own or anyone else’s – but perhaps something subconscious is objecting?

It doesn’t help that he finds himself accidentally paying court to Mick – valiant and daring deeds, performed for Mick's pleasure and amusement; a three-rotation expedition to find the most delicate sea-crabs that crawl upon the flat; gathering the melted mud of the cliff-ice all the way at the near-pole to spread upon Mick’s scars – they’re brands, apparently, which is subtly different from Leonard’s scars – in order to keep them supple and flexible. 

And Mick seems to think it’s all perfectly _normal_. 

Which is entirely fair, because it’s still not actually breeding season yet and Leonard has no idea why he’s acting like this, but _still_. 

He’s never had anyone with him so consistently. Mick assures him it’s quite common in the central-seas, speaks wistfully of pairs or triads breaking off to travel, two or three alone together, passing through the currents, but Leonard’s kind lead lonely lives. Once they pass a certain age, the restlessness comes upon them, the desire for their own domain, and they meet only in passing, or to dally a single breeding season together; as their species is both hermaphroditic and capable of (though not in preference for) parthenogenesis, a single season typically results in pups for the both of them to take away. The most contact one of Leonard’s kind will have past the age of adolescence is with their pups.

One might think that Leonard therefore thinks of Mick as some sort of overgrown pup – which he definitely is – but that’s not the case at all.

It occurs to Leonard – rather late, but in fairness, this has never happened to him before – that he might rather like to spend his next breeding season with Mick. This is a strange and unwelcome thought, because Leonard still doesn’t particularly want pups; he has too many adventures yet to go on to feel particularly inclined to spend a handful of years patiently raising pups – especially if he intends to keep Mick around; even with both of them hunting, there’s barely enough food between them – and yet. 

And yet. 

It doesn’t help that Mick has been unusually restless these last few rotations. He’s been taking longer and longer hunts, and yet he comes back with nothing unusual. Leonard would suspect that he’s preparing some sort of surprise, but the life-force Mick’s been bleeding out into the water have had only dissatisfaction, disappointment, wistfulness, sorrow – not anticipation, not pleasure, not joy.

Leonard dislikes it immensely.

He waits until Mick returns, a pathetic little dogfish clenched in his fist, and says, “What’s the matter?”

“What, no hello?” Mick replies, but he sounds bitter. “I think the romance is gone.”

“What’s the matter?” Leonard asks, again. “You are upset.”

“You _think_?”

“How can I fix it?” Leonard asks, changing tactics to focus on the part that matters to him. The cause is less important than the repair. 

Mick’s shoulders abruptly slump, and the heat around him speaks of both fondness and sadness. “It’s okay,” he says. “Nothing you can do.”

Leonard contemplates this obvious lie. Mick surely knows by now that Leonard can tell when he lies, but also that generally Leonard does not bother to correct him or call him on it. 

“If it’s something I’ve done…” he begins.

“No, no,” Mick says. “Nothing like that.”

Leonard considers the issue further. Restlessness, unhappiness, solo hunting trips further and further away from the poles – homesickness, perhaps? A desire to visit his natural waters?

Or worse, more _permanent_ relocation?

Leonard does a quick cost-benefit analysis between having to postpone his adventuring for a few years and possibly developing a sense of obligation persisting until the end of his life because he doesn’t know how to let go of things regardless of biology on one hand, and Mick leaving on the other, and abruptly says, “Would you be interested in mating this season?”

Then, when Mick gapes at him, Leonard reluctantly adds, “It doesn’t have to be with me, of course, and I understand that it’s a bit early –”

“A bit _early_?” Mick yelps.

“Breeding season doesn’t start for another tide-cycle at least,” Leonard points out. “Asking in advance is – well, I don’t know, I’m not sure it’s ever been done, to be honest; I usually try to avoid breeding season entirely –”

“Wait, is this your attempt to fix my mood?” Mick says suspiciously. Leonard has always found him to be quite sharp, despite his regular self-depreciating commentary. 

“I do not want you to leave,” Leonard confesses. “Ever, if possible. I’m not currently interested in having pups, but if the reason for your persisting distress is related to that…”

Mick sighs. “It’s not that,” he says gently. “I don’t want pups right now, either.”

Leonard’s shoulders relax minutely for a moment, but tighten when it occurs to him that Mick did not deny that he was leaving. “I have grown – accustomed – to your presence,” Leonard forces himself to say. “The concept of swimming my hunt-trails without you is…unpleasant.”

“And you thought you’d solve it by asking to _mate_ and have _pups_?” Mick says, sounding annoyed. 

Leonard has messed this up.

“Forgive me,” he says stiffly. “I’ve been having – feelings – and I may have mistakenly assumed – we can just move on –”

“Hoooold up,” Mick says. “I can’t believe I’m saying this to _you_ , but I think you may be going too fast.”

Leonard scowls at him.

“Let’s start at the beginning,” Mick says. He sounds reasonable. Leonard hates it when he sounds reasonable. “Are you asking me to mate with you because you want me to stay and you think it’ll make me happy, or are you asking me to mate with you because you want to mate with me?”

Leonard frowns. “I want you to stay,” he says. “I thought I made that clear.”

“Well, yeah, I got that,” Mick says. “But the mating business –”

“That was my mistake,” Leonard says. “It’s nearing breeding season, and I…” he hesitates. “I may have been inclined to start early this year. And you’re here, of course.”

Mick beats his tail thoughtfully, floating in place.

“I don’t normally do things like that,” Leonard adds. “I’ve just been –” He gestures futilely. “Feelings. Inconvenient feelings. Won’t bother you with them again.”

“Leonard,” Mick says.

Leonard flips his tail and aims snowsward.

Mick catches up with him easily. 

“Leonard!”

Leonard hisses at him.

“Leonard, wait,” Mick says. “When you say breeding season – you told me your kind _part_ , after the breeding season?”

“Traditionally,” Leonard agrees.

“But you don’t want me to leave.”

“No. You said yours – stay together, though? I had thought we could – do that.”

Mick hums thoughtfully. “Because you don’t want me leave.”

“No,” Leonard says. “I don’t want you to leave. And I have the inclination to breed with you. Apparently, I inadvertently conflated the two.”

“Not so inadvertently, given that I’ve been courting you for the last two months,” Mick says.

Len blinks. “You have _not_ ,” he says accusingly. “I’ve been courting _you_.”

“You _have_?”

“I got you _crabmeat_. It took me _three rotations_ to find one!”

“I thought you were just in the mood,” Mick says blankly.

“I fought a _glesne_ to show off for you.”

“The giant oarfish eel thing? That was awesome.”

“I even got you mud from the melting rocks,” Leonard says sulkily. “That’s not usually done until _after_ mating.”

“Hey,” Mick says indignantly. “And what about me? I got you nest-offerings!”

“The…stones?” Leonard says, blinking. He likes them – they give off life-force, even though they are not alive; their half-life is long enough to outlast even him – and he has added them to his nest. “ _My_ stones?”

“I have to help furnish your nest before I can expect to share it,” Mick says, like that’s _reasonable_ in any way.

“But you already share it,” Leonard says, exasperated. “And it’s been driving me mad, because I never _come_ here.”

Mick frowns and his life-force ripples with displeasure. “It’s not your real nest?”

“Of course it’s my nest,” Leonard snaps. “I’ve been building it up for most of my life. But I don’t _live_ in my nest! It’s for –” He pauses, realizing how his omission regarding the purpose of nests might be misconstrued, particularly in light of Mick’s rejection. Leonard really should have made it clear much earlier. The fact that he didn’t – well, perhaps he’d been inclined to take Mick on for a mate a little earlier than he’d entirely admitted to himself. 

Mick throws his hands up. “Wait, wait – are you telling me that your kind _don’t_ sleep in nests regularly?”

“No,” Leonard says. “It’s – we sleep in the currents. Staying in one place too long means that you bleed out life-force quickly; the currents help bring it back to you. The nest is for more, uh, _specialized_ purposes…”

“You brought me to your brood-nest,” Mick says, delighted. “For my kind, we sleep in the nests regularly – it protects us from unexpected heat-plumes or volcanic eruptions – and it only becomes a brood-nest when the owner officially makes it one.”

Leonard frowns. Mick sounds pleased about it, which does not square with his upset earlier. “Would you have accepted my suit if I had made some sort of official declaration?” he asks. 

“You don’t need to, if it’s not your – wait. Leonard. When you say _if_ I _would have_ accepted your suit –”

“I clearly need to learn the customs of your kind in relation to mating,” Leonard says reasonably, “if I am to have any hope of you accepting my suit next year.”

Mick reaches out and places his hands on Leonard’s shoulders. His hands emit life-force, what Mick calls ‘heat’; it is delightful.

“First,” Mick says. “Let’s get one thing straight. I’m not declining your suit. I am accepting your suit.”

“You _are_?” Leonard says blankly. “Your kind have very different acceptance patterns than mine.”

While in many respects, Leonard enjoys the customs of Mick’s kind, in this case he is convinced his own is the superior. They could be engaged in the mating-dance, twined around each other in the first, teasing, tempting stages of the dance, _right now_. 

“There was some miscommunication involved; it’s not normally like that,” Mick assures him. “Second – does your kind only mate during the breeding seasons? I assumed you had meant, well, the fertile times. For pups.”

“That _is_ what it means,” Leonard agrees. “And when else would we mate? We do not stay together after a mating, not like yours.”

“My kind,” Mick says, “stay together, and we start together, too. The fertile times are, ah, very _enjoyable_ , but you don’t need to wait until a breeding season starts to make a proposition. I hadn’t realized that you felt – I thought you were rejecting _my_ suit, not waiting for the right time of the cycle!”

Leonard blinks, contemplating this.

“I thought you were only offering to accept my suit because you wanted me to stick around,” Mick says. “I’d rather have a rejection than an acceptance from pity.”

“Why would I pity you?” Leonard asks. “I’ve been looking for you my whole life.”

“You can’t just say things like that,” Mick says, and abruptly pulls Leonard in, running one big, broad finger along Leonard’s gills. Leonard shudders, and twines his tail around Mick’s. “It makes me think things,” Mick says, his voice dropping lower, huskier. “Many things.”

“It’s not yet the breeding season,” Leonard says. His own voice is strange; he has never heard it do that before. “We – it would be safe, to mate now, if we didn’t want pups.”

“Oh, we’ll want pups,” Mick growls. “One day, I’ll fill you up with them, with _my_ pups, and we will raise them together, as is my kind’s way; but not yet. Right now I want you all to myself.”

Leonard had no objection to this whatsoever. The promise in Mick’s voice is more than he could have ever hoped for; he’s already anticipating what comes next. Now, and later, and until their last day when their life-cores fade and the last of their life-force slips away until they are one with the water in perfect, empty equilibrium.

Although, now that he thinks about it – 

“We should probably discuss the mating-dance,” Leonard says, although Mick is making it very difficult to think. Leonard can feel his mind moving even slower than usual, his life-force shimmering through his body, preparing it in all relevant respects for the mating process. “We wouldn’t want any more – miscommunications.”

Mick blinks. He’s close enough that Leonard can feel the movement of the water on his face as he does. “Yeah,” he says. “Especially since we don’t call what we do a _dance_.”

Leonard can feel his lips curl up and his smile gape wide, a Mick-style smile, meant to convey pleasure rather than instill fear. 

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” he says, sure of it. “But here – let me show you.”

Later, Mick turns to Leonard and says, “That part of your culture? We're _keeping_.”

Leonard’s many-toothed smile is broad, and fierce, and a statement of intent: _this one is mine – try and fight me for him_.

“I trust you will not be so unhappy now,” he tells Mick, smug and sated, stretching lazily in the way he has observed that Mick enjoys. 

“I wasn’t unhappy before,” Mick protests.

Leonard widens his eyes in disbelief.

“Well, I wasn’t _happy_ ,” Mick concedes. “I thought you were rejecting me. But I wasn’t going to leave just because of a disappointed courting.”

Leonard frowns. “Then why were you so restless, if you were not thinking of leaving?”

“Oh, that?” Mick says, surprised. “No, that wasn’t – that wasn’t it at all. It’s near migration-time. You know my kind make a journey snowsward, once a year; my kindred are not here to travel with me, but the call is still there.”

“I’ve always wanted to go snowsward,” Leonard says wistfully. “But I am blind, and there is too much life-echoes there to make my way.”

“The light,” Mick says, using the term his kind use for all life-echoes, which they say come from more sources than life. “I’m sorry you won’t be able to see it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t _go_ – I will go with you, and be your eyes. I will defend you from all comers.” His voice drops a degree. “It would be my _honor_.”

“Ah, now I understand,” Leonard says wisely. “Your kind engage in mate-fights _after_ you’ve won your intended. Defensive dueling, not courting.”

“You know,” Mick says, amused. “I think you’re right. I never noticed that we do that. But what say you?”

Leonard thinks about it for a long, slow moment, because all thoughts that are worth having deserve the consideration due to them. Mick has never minded Leonard’s slowness – he says that whatever the speed it goes, Leonard’s mind is still the quickest he’s ever met. Such sweet words. Leonard should have known he was being courted long before.

“I think,” he says, “that we should spend another three rotations in mating, and then go to meet Jax at the current-stream, and let him lead us where he will. If that is not too long a delay?”

“Oh,” Mick says. “I think I can convince myself to be patient.”

Jax is willing to lead them part of the way - apparently Grey is very excited, his mathematics telling him that they are on the cusp of some momentous event - and Leonard follows. 

He swims as slow as always, as certain as ever in his domination of his domain even as he abandons it for the snowsward seas that lie beyond his domain, and Mick is at his side, where he belongs. 

Leonard brushes by him, the barest flick of tails touching, and Mick shudders, an unnecessary spill of life into the waves. Leonard reflects that it is good that they are heading on migration instead of remaining stationary for breeding season – lack of desire for pups or not, he's unsure if they can keep their hands off each other. He fed them both well on bloodbelly comb jelly before this journey, though, which should keep the risk of pups low regardless. 

It had better, since Leonard finds he has no inclination to stop any more than Mick. A mate for more than a mere season, a partner for a lifetime instead of a cold and short dalliance – 

He's never giving it up.

Perhaps one day, they will return to the center-seas and meet the triad that raised Mick, mother-bearer, mother-sire, and mother-paired, all three, and Leonard will formally thank them for the gift they have given him. Not to mention tracking down every person who Mick even mildly dislikes and ripping them to pieces in his mate's name...

Despite the appealingly distracting nature of his thoughts, despite his growing blindness - they are reaching the upper limit of where Leonard has gone before, and passing it, and the life is saturating the water already - it is still Leonard who spots it.

Him.

The life in the water smells of metal.

"It's a bathyscaphe," Leonard breathes.

"A what?" Mick says, bemused.

"Here?!" Jax yelps.

"Jax, go two klicks froward, then return," Leonard orders. "You have told me of the human hunt-ships -"

"They don't go hunting for shark – or whale – this far down," Jax objects.

"- and I will not risk you," Leonard continues, ignoring him (which way is 'down' again? And why would the humans ignore a potentially fruitful hunt-trail?). "Mick, with me."

"What's a bathyscaphe?" Mick asks, obediently flicking his muscular tail - Leonard takes a moment to appreciate the barest sound of it in the water - and following Leonard, even as Jax beats a hasty retreat froward. Likely going to yell for Grey, his whale-friend, to tell him about this newest development, if Leonard has his angle right. "Is it a type of fish?"

"Far better," Leonard says. "It's a human ship."

"Human - the flat-walkers? They come this far down?"

"Rarely," Leonard replies. "I have wanted to see one for a very long time now."

They swim closer, shifting directions until the current conceals their approach, and until they can see the ship.

It is not large - Leonard would fit inside with difficulty, and Mick would be entirely sandwiched and probably his tail would protrude – but it is large enough for the single life inside. A life with a round head, square shoulders, and hands with five fingers each - convergent evolution at its finest.

Though it seems Jax was not exaggerating when he said that humans lacked both gills and tail, taking the additional flexibility of legs in exchange. 

He's tall, their human is; they can hear him speaking inside the vessel – 

"You won't believe how awesome this is, Cisco," the human says enthusiastically. "Man, am I happy that Wells let us go forward with this project - I've seen so many specimens, you have no idea - tell Iris I'm going to kick her ass when we share cool job stories next Christmas -"

\- and he is...

"Cute," Mick says, right by Leonard's ear. "Very cute."

Leonard lashes his tail, but doesn't take his eyes from the human. 

He's _perfect_. 

Leonard wants to know _everything_ about him.

"Are you trying to make me jealous?" he asks, though not without regret. "I will kill him for you, if you like."

He doesn't want to, not a human, not his _first_ human, but he's also not willing to give up his newfound mate. No matter how intriguing the temptation.

"Good," Mick says, pleased. "But no, I was serious. He's cute."

"Which means - what?"

Mick wraps his broad arms around Leonard's waist. "Do you want to keep him?"

Leonard blinks.

"We could cut the radio," Mick says thoughtfully. "Smash it in, then cart him with us on migration - there are some very nice caves - you can question him to your heart's content once we've gotten him back to the snowsrealm flat where he can breathe -"

Leonard begins to smile, his many-layered teeth showing, each and every one of them.

"Yes," he says. "Let's take him, and let's keep him. I have questions."

"You had questions for me, too," Mick says, playing wounded but smiling. "Should I be jealous? Maybe start expecting a triad-mate soon?"

"I don't even know if humans are capable of mating," Leonard objects.

"Dodging the question."

"I can't make a decision without information," Leonard says reasonably. "You get first priority as my mate –”

Mick hums in pleasure at the words.

“–but I’m not too worried,” Len says. “You think he's _cute_."

“I do at that,” Mick says gleefully. Leonard reaches over and squeezes his hand before breaking of to approach the human ship as Mick flips tail and aims to approach it from the snowsward direction.

The human inside is still talking. “The diversity here, it’s – it’s _amazing_ – I’ve never seen anything like it –”

Leonard comes up to his window.

The human gapes at him. 

Leonard feels his lips split into a smile – many-toothed and deep, the smile that shakes the bones of his prey – when he hears the audible crunch of the radio Mick has just taken out.

“Oh shit,” Barry Allen says.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm considering a sequel to this, if I get inspired. Feel free to let me know if there's anything else you'd like to see in this 'verse!
> 
> Notes:  
> Snowsward - up  
> Pullsward - down  
> Tosward - east  
> Frosward - west  
> Near-polesward - towards the direction of the nearest pole; in Len's case, it's north  
> Far-polesward - towards the direction of further pole, or south  
> Rotation - approximately a day  
> Tide-cycle - a month


End file.
